1.

Awaiting lift-off into the Second Space Age

2.. Directing AI for better and smarter legislation

Prelims Bytes

3. India to bridge language gap with neighbours

4. Centre plans revamp of livestock insurance scheme to raise coverage

5. Indian-American C.R. Rao wins Nobel Prize equivalent in statistics at the age of 102

6. India’s tiger population tops 3,000, shows census

Awaiting lift-off into the Second Space Age

The Space Age began in 1957 with the launch of satellite Sputnik 1,
and in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world’s first person
in space. Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in
1969. The First Space Age became reality.

The Second Space Age is here

GS Paper III- Page 6

• Between the 1950s to 1991, a period dominated by the Cold War, 60 to
120 space launches took place annually and 93% of these were by the
United States and the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republic
(USSR) governments.

• Last year, there were 180 rocket/space launches, 61 by Elon Musk’s

Space X; 90% of global space launches since 2020 are by and for the
private sector.

• The origins of the Second Space Age can be traced to the Internet. In
India, the process began accelerating as the 1990s saw the emergence
of private TV channels, together with cable TV followed by direct-to-
home transmissions.
India’s Journey

The first sounding rocket, a U.S.

India made a modest entry into
supplied Nike-Apache, was
the First Space Age in the
launched at Thumba (Kerala) in
1960s.
1963 and in 1969

Its first major project was

This led to the INSAT series in
Satellite Instructional Television
the 1980s, followed by GSAT,
Experiment (SITE) that
that provided the backbone for
involved leasing a U.S. satellite
the country’s tele-
in 1975-76 for educational
communication and
outreach across 2,400 villages
broadcasting infrastructure.
covering five million people.
India’s Journey

GAGAN, a joint project between

ISRO and the Airports Authority
Following the Indian Remote
of India, to augment Global
Sensing programme, this plan
Positioning System (GPS)
grew with the Oceansat and
coverage of the region, to
Cartosat series.
improve air traffic management
over Indian airspace.

This has now been expanded to

a regional navigation satellite
system called Navigation with
Indian Constellation (NavIC).
India’s Second Space Age

• The Indian private sector is responding to the demands of the Second

Space Age. From less than a dozen space start-ups five years ago,
there are over 100 today.

• The pace of investment is growing. From $3 million in 2018, it

doubled in 2019 and crossed $65 million in 2021.

• ISRO today is the operator, user, service provider, licensor, rule maker
and also an incubator. It has steered India through the First Space Age
and needs to do what it can do best now within its resources and its
high-quality manpower — research.

• What is needed now is legislation (a space activities act). This

provides the legal grounding that policy papers lack; help set up a
regulatory authority and create an enabling environment for raising
venture capital funding into the Indian space start-up industry
Directing AI for better and smarter legislation
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is attracting the attention
of entrepreneurs, political leaders, and policymakers
the world over. Most mature democracies are now
using AI tools for better pieces of legislation and
parliamentary procedures

GS Paper II- Page 6

Potentiality

• AI can analyse citizens’ grievances and social media responses, and flag
issues and priorities that need immediate attention.

• It can also assist parliamentarians in seeking citizen inputs for public

consultation of laws and preparing a manifesto.

• AI tools can assist parliamentarians in preparing responses for legislators,

enhancing research quality, obtaining information about any Bill, preparing
briefs, providing information on particular House rules, legislative drafting,
amendments, interventions
Examples

• The House of Representatives in the United States has introduced an AI tool to

automate the process of analysing differences between Bills, amendments and
current laws.

• The Netherlands House of Representatives, has implemented the

“Speech2Write” system which converts voice to text and also “translates”
voice into written reports.

• Japan’s AI tool assists in the preparation of responses for its legislature and
also helps in the automatic selection of relevant highlights in parliamentary
debates.

• Brazil has developed an AI system called Ulysses which supports transparency

and citizen participation.
Roadblocks

• For AI to work in India, we first need to codify our laws. The challenges with
current laws are they are opaque, complex and there is a huge translation gap
between law-making, law-implementing and law-interpreting organisations.

• India Code portal should contain a complete chain, right from the parent Act to the
subordinate pieces of legislation passed by the central government and the
amendment notifications, enabling any entity to get a 360° view.

• We need to make laws machine-consumable with a central law engine, which can
be a single source of truth for all acts, subordinate pieces of legislation, gazettes,
compliances, and regulations.
Prelims Bytes
 India to bridge language gap with neighbours

• Looking to expand its cultural footprint in nations with which it has historical
ties, including those in its immediate neighbourhood, India is planning to
create a pool of experts in languages spoken in countries such as Myanmar,
Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan and Indonesia to facilitate better people-to-people
exchanges.

• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has envisaged a special
project called ‘The Language Friendship Bridge’, which plans to train five to
10 people in the official languages of each of these countries.

• As of now, the ICCR has zeroed in on 10 languages: Kazakh, Uzbek,

Bhutanese, Ghoti (spoken in Tibet), Burmese, Khmer (spoken in Cambodia),
Thai, Sinhalese and Bahasa (spoken in both Indonesia and Malaysia).
 Centre plans revamp of livestock insurance scheme to raise coverage

• Pulled up recently by a Parliamentary Standing Committee for zero

insurance coverage of livestock in 2022-23, the Centre is considering a
comprehensive livestock insurance scheme modelled on the Prime
Minister’s Fasal Bima Yojana.

• At present, less than 1% of the country’s cattle is insured and the

average yearly premium is 4.5% of the insured amount.In 2021-22,
1,74,061 were insured.

• Finding the yearly premium to be unaffordable for most farmers, the

government is looking at reducing the rate and providing a subsidy for
cattle rearers of SC/ST communities

• Animal Husbandry Ministry had told the Standing Committee on

Agriculture and Animal Husbandry that farmers are often caught in the
fight between State government officials and insurance companies.
Indian-American C.R. Rao wins Nobel Prize equivalent in statistics at the age
of 102

• The Indian-American statistician Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao has been

awarded the 2023 International Prize in Statistics — the equivalent of the
Nobel Prize for statistics.

• It is awarded once every two years to an individual or team “for major

achievements using statistics to advance science, technology and human
welfare”

• Professor Rao’s groundbreaking paper, “Information and accuracy

attainable in the estimation of statistical parameters”, was published in
1945.

• One of Professor Rao’s papers in 1948 offered a novel generic approach to

testing hypotheses, now widely known as the “Rao score test”.
 India’s tiger population tops 3,000, shows census

• The tiger population has grown the most in the Shivalik hills and
the Gangetic flood plains, followed by central India, the
northeastern hills, the Brahmaputra flood plains, and the
Sundarbans. There was a decline in the Western Ghats numbers,
though “major populations” were said to be stable.

• Since 1973, when Project Tiger was established, the number of

dedicated tiger reserves has grown from nine reserves covering
18,278 square km to 53 reserves spanning 75,796 square km,
which is roughly 2.3% of India’s land area.
 Mains Questions

Q1. What is the Second Space Age? How can India harness
the potentialities of this age? (150 words, 10 marks)

Q2. How can AI and Machine learning produce better and

smarter legislation? (150 words, 10 marks)